View From History: Escalating Violence

March 20, 2014|By Bob Englehart

As part of our 250th celebration, I'll be posting selected historical cartoons from The Courant's files every Thursday. Today's is a cartoon by Dan Dowling of the Kansas City Star. Henry McNulty, who is our informal historic authority on all things Courant, provides the explanation for the cartoons.

Today's explanation:

1970-For much of the late 1960s, protests against the Vietnam war, racism, and other issues were common in the United States, particularly on college campuses. Many of these involved violence; from Jan. 1, 1968 to July 9, 1970, there were more than 4,000 bombings and more than 1,500 bombing attempts in the country, about half attributed to campus disturbances. This cartoon shows the "escalation" -- a term commonly applied to the enlargement of the Vietnam conflict -- of dissent, from benign demonstrations to deadly explosions. The idea was that those protesting against escalation were themselves employing it.